June 8, 2018 | By

GUT HEALTH IDENTIFIED AS IMPORTANT BIOMARKER

Credit: NIH Image Gallery/ Flickr

A new microbiota study out of China has revealed a potential link between healthy aging and a healthy gut.

Researchers at Western University, Lawson Health Research Institute, and Tianyi Health Science Institute in Zhenjiang, China studied the intestinal bacteria of more than 1,000 healthy Chinese participants ranging in ages from 3 to 100+ years old.

The most revolutionary part of the study published in mSphere late last year, showed little difference in the gut microbiota of healthy participants between the ages of 30 and 100.

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“This demonstrates that maintaining diversity of your gut as you age is a biomarker of healthy aging, just like low-cholesterol is a biomarker of a healthy circulatory system,” said Greg Gloor, the principal investigator on the study.

“It begs the question—if you can stay active and eat well, will you age better, or is healthy aging predicated by the bacteria in your gut?” asked Gregor Reid, professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.

The implementation of these findings are pretty straightforward according to Reid: “The aim is to bring novel microbiome diagnostic systems to populations, then use food and probiotics to try and improve biomarkers of health.”

You can read more about the microbiota study here.

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